M&S, it's time to break the ridiculous cycle of selling clothes entirely at odds with the weather

Hours after M&S said clothes sales fell further, its style director
suggested dresses with sleeves were the answer. But that rather misses the
point, argues Josephine Fairley, who asks why most retailers insist
on selling clothes entirely unsuitable for the weather outside the window.

The fashion show at the 2013 Marks and Spencer annual meeting: (showcasing coats and boots during the hottest week of the year yet)Photo: Simon Neville

Everything I’ve ever succeeded at, from editing magazines to launching a chocolate brand, has been achieved by putting myself in my customer’s shoes. And to be honest, I’m not really surprised that M&S’s clothes sales are still falling: it seems to be a long time since anyone’s stepped into the customers’ Footgloves, at Paddington HQ. (The retailer announced the eighth consecutive decline in clothing sales over a two-year period, while maintaining that this most recent 1.6pc drop is actually the smallest during that timeframe.)

While it must have been even more nail-biting than usual being a retailer this season – after what felt like the longest winter on record, I noticed women on the streets in black boots as recently as a week ago, which has got to be terrible for summer frock sales – I still believe that there are lessons M&S (and many other stores) can learn from customers. For instance: we do not, actually, want winter coats in July. We want them in February - at which point the swimwear’s just landed and the only coats left on the shelf are generally heavily discounted (and often for good reason) in the sales. Right now, finally, we want swimwear – and lots of it.

At Green & Black’s we first launchedice creambecause sales fell off cliff as soon as the chocolate temperature hit 20 degrees C. What our customers wanted, they told us, was something to cool them down. And we listened to those customers (who back then had to write actual letters rather than tweeting or Facebooking us with their suggestions). Can it really be that women aren’t actually communicating with brands like M&S about their wants and needs? Because when any group of my peers gets together, the ridiculousness of the retail calendar doesn’t take long to rear its head as subject matter. At some point, some savvy store chain is going to look at our British weather patterns and take the bold step of delaying what they put in store till the moment shoppers are likely actually to need it.

It will be a seriously bold move – but if retailers don’t want to have to hold the kind of seasonal sales promotions we’ve seen in the last few years, someone’s got to take the plunge: in London department stores, there is currently rack-upon-rack of summer clothing with prices slashed by 70pc, to make way for cashmere, wool and leather. (And I’ve a hunch it’s the same story, nationwide.) Yet on the basis of the last few winters, I won’t even start to think about scarves and hats till December.

Just who’s going to take the plunge and shift that calendar? I’d love it to be M&S, for so long the homeland of sensible thinking. (And for so long, the one place that those of us who aren’t in love with our upper arms could rely on finding summer dresses with that quaintest of style details: actual SLEEVES. Before they went all fashion-forward, that is)

This is not about M&S deciding who their real customer is. (Though we’ve seen them dither between really finger-on-the-pulse high street fashion, and real clothes for real women – who’ve always made up the majority of their clientele. And there are lots of us.) They make much of the arrival of style director Belinda Earl, from Debenhams, and that’s certainly a good portent (Incidentally, Earl yesterday tried to appease investors at the company's AGM by suggesting that sleeves were the key to the group's clothing revivalafter all.) But this goes beyond that: it means breaking what has become the impractical retail cycle of selling clothes that are entirely unsuitable for the weather visible outside the window - should anyone bother to look up from the Excel sales projections on their computer screen.

I’m pretty convinced that this simple shift in business practice would see sales surging, not languishing, in stores like M&S, delighting shoppers and shareholders alike. So isn’t it time, as customers (present or disaffected) we threw down the gauntlet to Marc Bolland and his team to take the bold step of retailing what customers want, when we actually need it? Which come to think of it may be the only time in history any of us has wanted to find a gauntlet - aka glove - on the high street, during the hottest week of the year...